Communications protocols may define connection methods to be used when establishing a connection between two nodes in a communications network. The connection method may be based on the relationship between the two nodes being connected. For example, a communications protocol may define a client-server connection method to be used if the two nodes being connected have a client-server relationship, and a peer-to-peer connection method to be used if the two nodes being connected have a peer-to-peer relationship.
In some cases because the client-server connection method may be simpler, it is desirable to use the client-server connection method even if the two nodes being connected have a peer-to-peer relationship.
As an example of a communications protocol that defines different connection methods based on the relationship between the nodes being connected, consider the Virtual Interface (VI) protocol. The VI protocol allows nodes in a network to communicate through a Virtual Interface, thereby effectively bypassing calls to an Operating System (OS) kernel which has the advantage of eliminating the overhead due to OS kernel calls.
The VI protocol can run over any interconnect that supports the VI protocol. For example, the VI protocol may run over the Fibre Channel (FC) interconnect, or the Infiniband interconnect. The VI protocol defines two types of VI connection methods, namely the client-server, and the peer-to-peer connection methods. When the end points in a VI connection have a peer relationship, it is natural to set up the VI connection using the peer-to-peer method. However, the client-server method is much simpler to implement than the peer-to-peer method because the client-server connection method has a simpler state machine.